


Lives left unlived

by tawg



Category: Hot Fuzz (2007)
Genre: Ficlets, Gen, Holmesian detectives, M/M, Multi, Soap Opera, Space Opera, animated disney, assortment of genres
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-01-24
Updated: 2009-01-24
Packaged: 2017-12-15 21:24:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,564
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/854213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tawg/pseuds/tawg
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some friends over at <a href="http://sandfordpolice.livejournal.com/">Sandford Police</a> gave me genre-related prompts, and I wrote a little ficlet for each one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Why are soapies always so filthy?

Staring: Inspector Nicholas Angel, Met Inspector Garnet, with allusions to Met Sergeant, Sergreant Danny Butterman, forensics agent Janine Nonamegiven.

 

Nicholas stood with his shoulders hunched, fists balled on the sleek top of the baby grand piano, the abandoned glass of cranberry juice slowly marring itss pristine surface as condensation slid down its side.

“I can’t return to the Met,” Nicholas said at last, the bottom of his black suit jacket flaring as he spun around. “I returned to London with the news that Kenneth was dead, only to find that you have tricked me here under the cruellest of false pretences!”

“It was the only way,” Inspector Garnet replied, with a sour turn to his mouth. “If only you had cooperated more fully-”

“You talk to me about cooperation!” Nicholas cried, gesturing wildly with one arm. “Cooperation after you exiled me to Gloustershire! After you tore me away from my family, from Janine!” Nicholas paused, slumping back against the baby grand with grief.

“You are more correct there than you suspect,” Inspector Garnet replied.

Nicholas carried on, unheeding. “And then when I finally find myself in the arms of someone who loves me, you feel it necessary to turn my life to turmoil again!”

“You speak of Danny,” Inspector Garnet said with a nod. “And you speak without being in possession of all the facts. The facts, Nicholas, of your birth.”

Nicholas stared at Garnet’s unusually stern face with his jaw slack. “My birth? But you… you told me that my parents died when their plane crashed on an expedition to Africa.”

“They did,” Garnet said with a nod, “but your uncle Derek, who kindly took you in and raised you as his own, withheld one fact from you.” Garnet stepped forward, into the greater light of the centre of the room, and tilted his chin up. “You have a sister, Nicholas.”

Nicholas gaped. “A sister? You mean, you mean I’m not the last of my family?”

“Far from it. That is the reason you were sent away, Nicholas. For the good of you, and your sister – Janine.”

“Janine?!” Nicholas clutched at his heart. “But what? But how?” Nicholas made to press past Garnet and out of the room. “I must see her!”

“I’m afraid that is impossible,” Garnet said, grabbing Nicholas’ bicep. “Janine is in the hospital.”

“What?”

“Did she tell you-” Garnet looked away. “Before you left, did she tell you that she was pregnant?”

Nicholas started. “Pregnant? I have a child?” 

“To your sister,” Garnet felt the need to point out.

Nicholas’ face crumpled like the dark sleeve of his suit jacket under Garnet’s grip. “Oh god,” he said. “Oh god, oh god. Why did you bring me here? Why did you tell me this? How- how can I look Janine in the eye knowing that we are kin? How can I even go back to Danny knowing what I have done?”

“Your relationship with Danny must come to an end,” Garnet said sternly. “There are things about him you do not know.”

“There is nothing you could tell me about Danny that would tear me away from him!” Nicholas cried, finally pulling his arm free of Garnet’s grip.

“What if I were to tell you of his relationship with Sergeant Canterbury?”

Nicholas gaped. “With him? That deskjockey? Janine’s cousin!?” Nicholas slumped to his knees. “Betrayed. So many times betrayed!”

Garnet dropped a gentle hand onto Nicholas’ shoulder. “Also, your plant died this morning. It was a heroin overdose.”


	2. Elementary, my dear Butterman

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With appologies to Roald Dahl.

Mr. Nich’las Angel was sprawled across the sofa in the small sitting room of his flat as I approached him with the notion of writin’ down some of the more ‘pressive moments of his career. It was the events of September 3, 1902 what I was most wanting to recall. It were important, I explained to him, that the public be aware of all the good work what was done behind the uniforms of Scotland Yard and the local police that so consistently kept them safe.

“Really Danny,” he said at length. “It was hardly anything.”

“Don’t be so modest,” I replied. 

“It’s not modesty,” my old friend and one of the keenest minds to doff one of them spiffy caps this that flappy bits at the front and back, “it’s awareness of this thing called ‘common sense’.” He waved one fine, vague hand through the air. “Anyone with a basic understanding of victim and criminal psychology could have discerned that the housewife of the deceased had not, in point of fact, come home and found her husband sprawled on the floor with his head caved in if only because her reasoning of coming home from the shops empty handed after trying to buy a leg of roast for dinner is, in fact, highly unreasonable given that this course of event was supposed to have happened at nine-thirty at night when all shops in the neighbourhood were closed, when no good woman would dream of stepping out unescorted, and when dinner should have in fact been served at least two hours earlier.”

“But it was dead impressive,” I pressed on. “The way you figured out who done it and what the murder weapon was an’ all.”

“Motive was hardly an issue – the scents of two distinct women’s perfumes in the front parlour where the man was found was the first implication of foul play, and after ruling out the wife’s perfume that left only the foreign aroma wafting gently from the gentleman’s shirt to be identified. Being the scent not of the wife, I jumped to the conclusion that he had been caught having an affair and that the wife had clobbered him with a household item and rushed off to dispose of it before calling the police, thus accounting for her stumbling upon her husband’s body so late in the evening.”

“But see whot I mean?” I asked adoringly. “That was some amazin’ powers of deducement there!”

“Yes,” said Nicholas. “Well,” he deflated a little, sulking into the couch. “It all went rather pear-shaped when investigating the corpse revealed that there had been no affair. That the wife had come home from her legitimate potato quest through the back door, seen a dumpy woman standing in the parlour and – fearing that she was being robbed by her housekeeper clobbered the figure with a roast leg of lamb. When she realised that she had attacked and killed her husband – who was, for some unknown reason, enjoying her garments – she changed his clothes to avoid embarrassment, called the police, and then proceeded to feed the rather peckish officers with slices of the murder weapon between chunks of white bread.”

“Dead kind of her, that was,” I agreed.

“The truth all came out down at the station, anyway,” my good friend added. “I didn’t really have all that much to do with it.”

“You absconced from having a sandwich,” I pointed out. “That was pretty sharp of you.”

“Red meat doesn’t agree with me,” he said as he diverted his gaze out the nearby window, a tinge to his cheeks.

I stared at my friend’s rather impressive profile for a bit. “You ever considered smoking a pipe?” I asked.

He gave me a strange look. “Where’d that idea come from? You know it’s horrid for your health.”

“Dunno,” I said. “Just occurred to me.”

“We’ve been cooped up here too long, that’s what’s giving you all these strange notions.”

“Pub then?” I suggested.

He sighed. “Lead on, old friend.”


	3. Your predecessor assumed that Space Policing was easy

pace Law Officer Nicholas Angel was less than impressed with his promotion and subsequent reassignment to the belt. It was, he knew, more an act of sweeping competence under the rug than any really== reward for his many years as a flawless officer. He stared moodily out of the port of his carrier.

The belt was the divide between the respectable colonies and the outer, less demure populations. Beyond the belt pirates drifted in unregistered freighters, farmers spent more time growing narcotics than the crops their planets were terraformed for, and space prostitution was rampant. The belt was, by all reports, a relatively quiet region. Sparsely populated by the inhabitants of the most distant law house of the colonies, and the few trade agents required to keep the belt supplied with the necessities. Nicholas sighed heavily. He was going to spend the rest of his life in front of a vid screen, asking for transmissions of registration details.

 

Nicholas trailed listlessly behind his new superior as he toured the law house. “This is Andrew,” the inspector said, gesturing to a man with a moustache and a leering look. “And this,” he said gesturing to a different corner of the room and the exact same individual, “is also Andrew.”

Nicholas nodded at the detective and his clone. Cloning was culturally outlawed on the inner planets, but Nicholas had held back enough riotous crowds on that very issue to see the signs. The skin that looked a little to young and plump across bone structures, the eyes that were a little slow to focus. The fact that you had two or more completely identical people staring at you was also a rather keen indication. He nodded his head at the Andrews, and continued along with the tour.

He met Tony, who had thwarted the suggestions of retirement in light of his solar-induced eye decay by having his eyes replaced. The implants were outdated but, Nicholas was forced to admit, the issue was more one of fashion these days than it was one of aging technology. He met Walker, the rather inappropriately nicknamed head of the previous inspector, who nodded to him and murmured in the rather incomprehensible way of all jar-ensconced members of society. He was even introduced to the Turning Surveillance Unit situated in the entrance of the law house, built using various principles of gravity and water and gyroscopes and things, and then hooked up to an uncountable number of cameras.

“And this,” said the inspector with a wide beam, “is the last member of our little ragtag crew. My boy Danny.”

Nicholas stared at the metal the inspector clapped his hand upon. The DN1 model had been designed to access all terrains, and was basically a big metal ball, textured with grips, with a semi-sphere of navigation mechanisms plonked on top and a small decisive unit on top of that. Imagine a half-peeled orange (balanced on the peeled bit) with a grape on top, covered in shiny metal, and you had the basic idea. The flat black screen of the nav-mech, belying the machine’s age, rippled with excited lines of green.

“He’ll be helping you out until you find your feet around here,” the inspector added with a friendly grin.

Nicholas sighed. “Pleased to make your acquaintance.”

“Bzlrt,” the DN1 unit replied.


	4. The 'plink plink' of blinking eyes

Life as a duck wasn’t especially easy. Life as a duck police officer was certainly straying into the area of ‘hard’. And, well, if you happened to be a duck police officer who was still hurting from a recent break up with an incredibly fine forensics mouse, and were entertaining the notion of wooing your best friend – you best friend who was a cat – well. 

At first Nicholas had resented being shipped off from the country, and away from the bustling metropolis that had looked suspiciously like Florida, OL. He was a city duck at heart, and spending his days running after shoplifting swans and tripping over his own feet just didn’t fill him with the same pride that being the best City Duck on Duty had. He’d thrown a rather large tantrum to this effect when his transfer had first being announced. For some reason, his superior officers had pretended to find his yelling completely unintelligible. 

Danny Buttercat had been the only really good thing about the transfer (well, to be fair, his peace lily was downright flourishing in the country air). But despite their many hours walking the beat together, and watching an assortment of forest animals fail to grasp the complexity of the bard on stage, and sitting side by side at the bar (drinking malts or, if they were feeling particularly risqué and under contract, the occasional Coke), Nicholas still felt that there were communications issues between them. Danny could fire questions at Nicholas about the job, or about city life, or about having webbed feet, and when Nicholas did eventually cave and answer Danny would just stare at him with that familiar, uncomprehending look on his face.

(Surely Nicholas’ city accent wasn’t _that_ bad.)

They were sitting in Danny’s flat (one of the few Nicholas had been in that wasn’t inherently pastel coloured), sitting on his cosy, overstuffed couch. Between sipping from cans (Coke) Danny had been talking about the town, about rugby, and about his family. Cats, it seemed, had rather large and complicated family trees. Danny was his own uncle, grandfather, and, somehow, his own niece.

“What ‘bout you?” Danny asked. “You got any family?”

Nicholas shook his head. He’d told Danny yesterday about the horrible nest-fire of his youth, and being brought up by a mix of boarding schools and his Uncle Drake, but most of seemed to have gone in one pointed ear and out the other.

“So you must really like bein’ a police-duck then,” Danny said. “I was talkin’ to dad, and he tole me about your injury, and that’s why you hold yer wing funny sometimes.”

Nicholas scowled. There had been a few words to him before he had left for the country about taking it easy, about how it would be harder for him to be cream-pied within an inch if his life if he were unable to intervene in the burglaries of industrial bakeries. Being plastered to the pavement with cream and custard and feeling it set into his feathers, making him sticky and completely immobile except for wide, blinking eyes… Nicholas shuddered. He was definitely a biscuit ~~man~~ duck now.

“You must know lots about policin’ and everything,” Danny continued, mostly to himself. 

_I want to know lots about being with you,_ Nicholas thought loudly. He’d been trying for weeks to put words to his feelings. And either he’d failed to come up with anything that wasn't nonsensical quacking, or else nonsensical quacking was all that Danny heard. Which was slowly driving Nicholas around the bend. He’d heard his voice with his own ears, and while there was certainly a large quacking element involved, it was perfectly intelligible. No matter what anyone’s blank expressions may suggest.

“Nicholas,” Danny asked, having one of his sudden thoughts, “how come neither of us is wearin’ pants? I mean, it’s not exac’ly convenient or anything, not having any pockets.”

Nicholas shrugged, as it was one of the few answers that Danny could definitely understand. And then a thought struck him – actions do speak louder than words, after all. Nicholas swivelled on the couch, grabbed Danny by the collar of his rugby shirt, and pulled their faces together in a hard kiss. (Well, with a beak, it’s hard for a kiss to be anything else, really.)

Danny stared at Nicholas slack jawed, until something filtered though to his brain and his face muscles pulled into a grin. (No one, Nicholas was forced to admit, grinned like a cat.) “Ooooh,” Danny said through his skewed whiskers and wide grin. “That does explain it.”


End file.
